I love this time of year and not because Christmas is just around the corner and there will soon be three small presents, two medium presents and one large present - all wrapped in different paper - under a tree decked out in eleventy-billion pounds of tinsel and lights in ALL THE COLORS (Mr. Adams has some pretty finite ideas about his kind of Christmas). I love this time of year because my thoughts turn to the new year and the possibilities to come.

I used to spend a lot of time making new year's resolutions. Resolutions like I’m going to lose 50 pounds (by February), jog ten miles a day, eat nothing but wheat grass and spelt, save 50% of my income, and steam clean my toilets weekly.

Then January 2nd would roll around and I’d be full of shame because I had eaten 5 pounds of taco dip on New Year’s Day, laid on the couch for 24 hours straight, spent all of my money on champagne and forgot, yet again, to buy a steam cleaner.

I set myself up for failure every year.

Resolutions rarely work. They’re usually too big, too hard and too much. And often they are way too much someone else’s voices in our head and not what we truly desire for ourselves. It is simply unrealistic to think that at the stroke of midnight on January 1st, we’ll stop being ourselves and become something - or somebody - we’ve never been before.

That’s not to say that a desire to change and grow is bad because it is most certainly not. But there are ways to do so that actually work (trust me, kind of built a whole business on it).

First thing? Throw out those damn resolutions.

This year, instead, let’s start with the end goal. Where do we actually want to be at 11:59 pm on December 31st, 2018? Who do we want to be? How do we want to feel? What will we have wanted to learn? Experience? Contribute to the world?

And what’s just one small way we can get 1% closer to being that person today? It's the 1% that matters the most. Baby steps - small steps - add up.

The journey of a thousand miles starts with one step. Where is your thousand mile journey going to lead you this year and what’s the first, ONE, step you’ll be taking to get there? I’d love to hear all about it! Leave a comment below or shoot me an email at hello at theshehive dot com.